ADEZE OJUKWU
New Jersey, USA

UNITED States (U.S.A.) based William J. Clinton Foundation, owned by former President Bill Clinton, is to collaborate with five leading medical technology companies to drastically reduce the price of HIV/AIDS laboratory tests for millions of people in Africa and the Caribbean.

Mr. Clinton who disclosed this yesterday during a news conference in New York, said the agreement would reduce cost of key tests by about 80 per cent for people living with HIV/AIDS.

He said the Foundation expected that with the reduction in the cost of laboratory tests, about five million people would benefit from the tests by 2008.

The five companies involved in the agreement include Bayer Diagnostic; Beckman Coulter, Inc; BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company); BioMe’2(C)eux and Roche Diagnostics.

Stating that the agreement would save almost $300 million in South Africa alone over the next five years, Clinton said the cost of testing and treatment in the country would now be about $250 per patient per year which is about 70 per cent reduction as against the current price of $800 per patient annually.

"The reduced-price tests will initially be available in the 16 countries and territories where the Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative is working with governments to set up countrywide integrated care, treatment and prevention programmes," Clinton said.

"We are systematically changing the economics of AIDS treatment in places where, before now, very few people have been able to receive life-saving care.

"By pushing down the price of HIV/AIDS medicine and laboratory tests, we are ramping up the ability of developing countries to treat millions of people and to do so with the kind of quality of care that people with AIDS in the developed world usually receive," former President Clinton said.

Daily Champion gathered that this is the second major price-reduction agreement negotiated by the Foundation. The first was last October when Clinton announced a major reduction in the price of anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) for use in the developing countries.

Clinton told newsmen yesterday that the agreement covered two HIV/AIDS laboratory tests – the cd4 test and the viral load test.

He said while the cd4 test helps determine when ARVs should be administered to people living with AIDS, the viral load test "helps measure how effective ARVS are suppressing the virus and can alert clinicians about the need to adjust dosages or change regimens."

"As part of the agreement, the companies will provide equipment and related products and services to each of the countries involved, which helps the countries avoid large upfront costs," he added.

He stated that his Foundation has been working for over a year helping individual governments in Africa and the Caribbean to develop "scalable AIDS care, treatment and prevention strategies."

According to him, in the Caribbean," the Foundation is working with nine countries and three territories which together have over 90 per cent of people living with AIDS in the Caribbean.

In Africa, the Foundation is working with Mozambique, Rwanda, South Africa and Tanzania which together have about 33 per cent of all people living with AIDS in Africa," Clinton further stated.